Pelican Road [Hardcover]

Howard Bahr (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 9, 2008

From the acclaimed author of 'The Black Flower', a beautiful and haunting portrait of the men who served on the great American railroads. Christmas Eve, 1940. On the Pelican Road, an isolated stretch of railway between Meridian, Mississippi and New Orleans, two trains travel toward one another through the snow. A.P. Dunn, engineer aboard the 4512, a southbound freight, can remember every detail of the last trip he made in the snow, in 1923. What he can t recall are the events of a few hours ago - where he ate his breakfast, how he got the troublesome gash. On the northbound Silver Star, a luxury passenger train packed with returning college students and gift-bearing families, brakeman Artemus Kane has his own memories to contend with. Memories of French trenches and German snipers, of a failed marriage, of a too - short layover spent with Anna Rose Dangerfield, the brilliant and lonely woman he has just left behind in the Crescent City.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

After penning a highly praised trio of Civil War novels—The Black Flower (1997), The Year of Jubilo (2000), and The Judas Field (2006)—Bahr turns to the 1940s and a close-knit group of railroad men. Bahr, a former railroad man himself, is intimately familiar with that world (“an alien, masculine world with a language all its own”) and here deploys many lovingly detailed passages describing the mechanics and machinery. A. P. Dunn, engineer on a freight train, has been suffering from memory loss, but his crew is reluctant to confront him because of his loyal service and his generous mentoring of the younger men; meanwhile, Artemus Kane, a conductor on a deluxe passenger train who is also a World War I vet haunted by his battle experiences, wonders if he has finally met a woman he can commit to. Due to a series of miscommunications, the two trains seem to be on a collision course in spite of the crews’ long years of experience and dedication to their work. Running right underneath the suspenseful narrative is a beautifully wrought view of the world as a lonely and unforgiving place. --Joanne Wilkinson

Review

...re-creates this seminal moment in American history with prose that is vivid, unflinching, and often incantatory...Howard Bahr's accomplishment is magnificent. --Washington Post Bookworld

...a mature work of fiction by a gifted writer affectingly eloquent and fearless of complexity and ambiguity...Bahr is a writer with a fluent lyric facility, subtly ensuring that the brutality of his narrative events never becomes numbing...a beautifully wrought novel that deserves a wide audience. --Los Angeles Times

[Bahr] is a true poet of weather, of night and of time...Not since James Agee has someone made the Southern night so alive, so intimate, so orchestral...Along with the sweeping, cinematic story of rebellion, loyalty, revenge, and reawakened romance, Bahr s evocation of place and time is the most enduring achievement of the novel. --New York Times

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 299 pages
• Publisher: MacAdam/Cage (June 9, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596922893
• ISBN-13: 978-1596922891
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #555,704 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a powerful and evocative novel, May 26, 2008

By 

David W. Straight (knoxville, tennessee United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pelican Road (Hardcover)

This is a beautifully written novel about a couple of days in the life of railroad men, written by a former railroad man. You see life through the eyes of the engineers, the firemen, brakemen, railroad detectives, conductors, and yard men. The novel is rich in detail and authenticity. This is not a novel about the lives of passengers, chance meetings in the dining car, that kind of thing. The characters are wonderfully drawn--no one-dimensional or two-dimensional people here. You get a very good feeling for the life of the railroad.

There's A.P. Dunn, the engineer on the southbound freight, a longtime veteran who appears to have problems with Alzheimer's. Rufus Payne is the engineer on the crack express Silver Star, out of New Orleans bound for Atlanta and Washington, running late and stubbornly determined to make up time. Artemus Kane, conductor on the Silver Star, keeps thinking back to his days in France in the Great War. Eddie Cox is Dunn's firemen, and due to retire the following day. Donny Luttrell, disgraced college student from a wealthy family, runs the tiny isolated Talowah depot as a penance--he's the only one there, and manages the switches, yardwork, telegraphy, waybills, etc--in some ways he's one of the most interesting characters in the novel. The lives of these men and others are all intertwined.

The sense of time and place is unforgettable--the grime and soot, living conditions aboard a caboose, the always present threat of death and disfigurement for those who aren't careful enough (one of the characters is missing three fingers). The characters in the novel at one point discuss "boomers"--skilled railroad men with a wanderlust who move from railroad to railroad, often crisscrossing the country. Bahr himself served with 5 railroads. There's an excellent railroad novel titled, appropriately, "The Boomer" by Harry Bedwell. This is an episodic work about Eddie Sand, a skilled telegraph operator--these are always in short supply, and the railroads have too many Talowahs, tiny depots that need telegraphers who can manage the switches and the signals the way Donny Luttrell does. Boomer and Pelican Road are both "railroaders' novels", told from an insider's point of view. Up to now, Boomer perhaps stood on its own as the only good railroad novel--but now we also have Pelican Road. Great reading!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A story told by a master., June 4, 2008

By 

K. Caudell "kfcaudell" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pelican Road (Hardcover)

Those who are familiar with Howard Bahr's work know that he is one of those rare writers that Mark Twain referred to as "word musicians." Just about anyone can tell a story, but it takes a true talent to make music with words. Bahr does it again with Pelican Road, his fourth novel.

The setting is a bit of a departure for those readers who are accustomed to the 19th century historical fiction of Bahr's three previous novels, but no one should be disappointed by that. Christmas Eve 1940 on the railroad comes alive in this book, thanks to Bahr's beautifully vivid descriptions of people and places. The characters become the reader's steadfast friends - we hope the best for them, and weep for their tragedies. And while Pelican Road may be a tragic story, it is not without hope.

Buy this book, early and often. Give a real writer the recognition he deserves.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All Aboard for a Wonderful Ride, July 15, 2008

By 

A Southern Reader (New Orleans, LA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pelican Road (Hardcover)

First, in the interest of full disclosure, I must say that I loved Bahr's Civl War triology. Boy, can he write. In this novel about railroading in the 1940's Bahr applies the same wonderful techniques of character development and setting descriptions that he so successfully used in that Civil War trilogy. All of the characters are memorable, and though I wasn't around during the early 40's as a railroad man, his descriptions of that whole scene strike me as eerily right on the money. I enjoyed the novel immensely and reccomend it for anyone but especially for the reader who not only enjoys a rip roaring tale, but one told with unbelievable eloquence. You're gonna love this book.